Mumbai: Actress Kalki Koechlin has opened up about the importance of seeking professional support in parenting, particularly how therapy helped her and her partner, Guy Hershberg, navigate disagreements and better understand their child’s emotional needs.

In an interview with IANS, Kalki shared how her relationship with Hershberg has evolved since they became parents, especially during the challenges of raising their daughter, Sappho, who was born in February 2020. "It's evolving all the time; it's still evolving," she said. "I think people don't emphasise enough how much parents need help and how parents should have access to that help. We're lucky enough, privileged enough, that we can afford a therapist or a psychologist."

"There were times when we disagreed on how to raise our daughter, and we'd argue whether she needed to be punished in a certain way or face a specific consequence for a tantrum or whatever," she recalled. "We disagreed vehemently."

Their solution, she explained, was to seek guidance from a child psychologist, who helped articulate their daughter's needs when she couldn't voice them herself. 

Kalki also discussed the importance of teaching children how to express their emotions in healthy ways, sharing how activities like pillow fights can help children channel anger. “One of the big tools our therapist gave us was a very simple one: the pillow fight,” she said. “If your kid is angry or frustrated, and they want to throw something, or be rude, or hit, or bite, or be nasty to a sibling, you can say, ‘Okay, I see you have big feelings. Let’s have it out with a pillow fight.’”

Kalki explained that allowing children to release their anger in controlled ways can help them develop self-regulation. “Most of the time, we just tell them, 'It's not nice. Don't be angry. Don't be aggressive. These are bad behaviours.' But actually, if they suppress it, they're still feeling that anger inside, and then it comes out in a random, unpredictable way,” she said.

She continued, “So, allowing them to feel those big feelings, letting them be angry, but letting them channel it in a good way—like today, as an adult, you might go on a jog if you're feeling angry, thinking, 'I need to let the steam out.' That self-regulation needs to be taught early on.”